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Development Tools Database Foundations SQL Calculating, Aggregating and Other Functions String Functions

Posted by Joe Hilton
Joe Hilton
Courses Plus Student 4,893 Points

Can anyone point me in the right direction as to what's wrong with my MySQL code please

So the task says: "Select the "first_name" followed by the username in parentheses and alias it as "display_name". For example "Andrew (chalkers)". There's a space between the end of the first_name and username in parentheses."

And my MySQL command is this:

"SELECT CONCAT(first_name, " " , (username)) As display_name FROM users"

It's displaying the table but it keeps saying that something is wrong but I can't quite put my finger on it.

4 Answers

Justin Horner
STAFF
Justin Horner
Treehouse Guest Teacher
Justin Horner
Justin Horner
Treehouse Guest Teacher

Hello Joe,

You're almost there!

To include the username inside of parenthesis using the variables you've provided, the code would look something like this. We need to add the parenthesis as strings to the CONCAT function with the username variable in the center.

SELECT CONCAT(first_name, ' (', username,  ')') AS display_name FROM users

I hope this helps.

Joe Hilton
Joe Hilton
Courses Plus Student 4,893 Points

Hi Justin, this was correct thanks :)

Chris Vukin
Chris Vukin
17,787 Points
Chris Vukin
Chris Vukin
17,787 Points

The instructor should cover using these special characters like in the exercises. It does no one any good to throw in untaught material to challenges, this is not a proper education technique. We might as well just do all our learning by googling huh? But that's not why we pay for the courses.

Sreng Hong
Sreng Hong
15,083 Points
Sreng Hong
Sreng Hong
15,083 Points

Hi Joe, I think you can't do (username), but I'm not so sure about that.

I found out another way to pass this challenge

select concat(first_name," (",username,")") as display_name from users;
Amin Khoshzahmat
Amin Khoshzahmat
12,342 Points
Amin Khoshzahmat
Amin Khoshzahmat
12,342 Points

THIS IS YOUR ANSWER 

SELECT CONCAT( first_name," (",username,")" ) AS display_name FROM users;